much iron has been wasted!'
'All right, buzz off out of here! Don't try to lecture me.'
I looked at Tiktor's spiteful, greenish eyes and realized just how low he had sunk.
'Still at your old game, Tiktor?' I said bitterly and turned away.
Those hours before dawn, in the cool of approaching day, when your arms were not tired and there were no beads of sweat on your dusty forehead, were a real delight. One by one the electric lamps would go out as daylight filtered through the glass roof of the foundry.
That morning Naumenko and I worked well. Three rows of moulds with 'sausages' in them were soon lined up behind us. Seeing that Naumenko had stopped for a rest, I asked: 'How did they manage to turn out such a lot of bad work, Uncle Vasya? I just can't understand it.'
'It's not very hard to understand,' Naumenko turned at the sound of my voice and rested his foot up on the mixture box. 'Every machine and model has a soul of its own, just like a man has. One model may be fussy and need a bit of careful handling, another may have a steadier character and not be afraid of any knocks. You've got to feel it all with your heart. There's some models you have to treat carefully with a warm slab and plenty of dusting. And there's others you can just mould with your eyes shut.'
'But the machines are all the same, aren't they?'
'Not on your life! Everything here ought to be mechanized. Even packing and tamping ought to be done with compressed air. That's how it was to start with, when they first installed these machines. But as soon as the Soviets started taking over the factories, the old owners tried to mess everything up. They destroyed the plans, they pulled the compressors to pieces and buried the parts or threw them into the sea. Those foreign engineers and clerks did their dirty work at nights.'
'And where was Andrykhevich? Why didn't he look after things?'
Naumenko took a pull at his cigarette.
'Who knows!' he said. 'Maybe he was fishing out there on the breakwater, maybe he was swigging whisky with his bourgeois pals. He had everything he could wish for, so he wasn't much concerned about what those wreckers were doing here...'
'Did they always heat up the machines with slabs like we do now, Uncle Vasya?' I asked, feeling my model which was beginning to cool. 'It's a lot of trouble.'
Naumenko regarded me in astonishment.
'A lot of trouble! Why?'
'But of course it is! As soon as you've done a few moulds, your slab's cold. Then you've got to run all the way across the foundry to the heater...'
'You are a young gent', aren't you? Too lazy to run a few paces? Perhaps you'd like a horse and cart to take you there? All the work in the foundry is based on running about. If you want to take it easy, you'd better ask for a job in the office.'
Naumenko's words touched me on the raw, but I did not want to argue with him.
So as not to hold up the moulding, I grabbed the tongs and ran off to the heater.
As I darted across the foundry, I thought to myself: 'But you're wrong, Uncle Vasya! What's the sense in all this running about? Where does rationalization come in? If you added up the distance we cover going backwards and forwards to the heaters, you'd be half way to Mariupol!'
Before we had finished our hundred and first mould, Fedorko, the foreman, came up and asked: 'Going to knock-off soon, Naumenko?'
'What's up, Alexei Grigorievich?'
'We're going to change you over.'
Uncle Vasya stopped moulding.
'What to this time?' he growled, making no attempt to hide his annoyance.
'We're going to give you some rollers to do.'
'Rollers? But look here, Alexei Grigorievich, let us stay on 'sausages!' We've only just got into the way of the job and now you want to change us over!'
'It's got to be done,' Fedorko said sternly. 'The store's chock-full of those sausages of yours, but there's hardly a roller in the place. I put those basher-boys on it, but you can see for yourself what their work's like— enough spoilage to fill a couple of railway trucks! Another performance like that and the assembly shop will be out of work. Can we risk that?'
'I get you,' Uncle Vasya said, 'but. . .'
'What are you 'butting' about, Uncle Vasya?' Gladyshev shouted from behind his machine. 'It's a fine change! You need half a furnace of iron to cast those sausages of yours, but you can fill up a roller-mould in a couple of ticks!'
Two navvies brought some spare slabs in from the tool shop and dropped them on the dry sand, where the few empty mould-boxes we had left were piled. Whenever I went to the moulding floor to set the lower half of a mould, I took a look at the new model. It seemed very simple. Six rollers like the ones that turn the sails of a reaper were soldered to the smooth babbitt slab. On each of the rollers there was a small nipple to hold the core. And the top was even more simple. There was a nest of six little thimbles for the cores, and several small channels—like the veins on a maple-leaf—for pouring the metal into each mould.
'How could anyone make a mess of such a simple casting?' I wondered as I set my moulds.
Lunch-time was near. Turunda and Gladyshev had finished their moulds and started casting. It was too hot to do any more moulding. The heat from the filled moulds near by was scorching. There was a clang on the furnace bell and the daily distribution of metal began.
'Stop moulding!' Naumenko commanded. 'Let's go to the furnace.'
We did our casting to the sound of the furnace bell, which was rung every time the furnace was tapped.
Between one gong and the next there was just time to carry the heavy ladle of molten metal to the machines 'and fill the moulds.
How glad we were when the iron at last rose to the top of the mould and the round hole of the
pouring gate filled up and turned red! It was good to know that all our moulds were properly damped, and would fill up well, without spluttering hot, stinging drops of metal all round. Burbling softly inside the mould, the metal gradually filled every cranny in the mould and grew thick and firm in its cold sandy prison.
Scarcely had we tipped away the brownish slag into the sand when the furnace bell rang again calling the foundry men to refill their ladles. Then we would go back to where the teemers, in dark glasses, with their hats pulled down over their foreheads, and their tapping bars at the ready, were bustling about round the roaring furnaces. We went back at a run. Uncle Vasya would hop along like a youngster, quite forgetting his age.
I liked this risky work, the race against the other moulders across the soft sand of the shop, and the careful return with a heavy ladle of molten metal.
The air was thick with fumes. My throat felt dry from the smell of sulphur. The glare of flying sparks made the few electric lamps that were still burning in the foundry almost invisible.
Close by, behind the unfinished blast-furnace, a round pot-bellied furnace for melting copper was roaring—we used to call it the 'pear,' because of its shape. Now and then we felt the acrid smell of molten copper. Caught up in the general excitement, however, I noticed neither the heat nor the fumes, which increased as the casting went on.
The sweating faces of the moulders gleamed dark brown in the light of the flames.
I stood by the furnace spout, down which a yellowish stream of iron poured into our ladle, glancing at Uncle Vasya's grim attentive face, and I realized yet again that I had chosen the right job.
The little glowing splashes of molten iron flew over my head cooling in their flight, but I no longer tried to dodge them as I had once; perhaps my face quivered a bit, but I kept a firm hold on the metal ring of the handle.
In our marches across the foundry with a ladle full of molten metal there was a kind of valour, there was risk, there was cheerful daring. As we carried the heavy ladles back and forth, tired and dripping with salty sweat, but proud of ourselves and our work, I felt unbelievably.
Not until the casting was nearly over did I notice Sasha Bobir with an adjustable spanner in his hand, and another fitter tinkering about round our machines, adjusting the new 'models for the next day's casting. Apparently Sasha had been watching us filling the moulds for some time, and when I put the ladle down on the sand and came
